Some of me pictures...

CITY AT NIGHT...

This is the view from the balcony of our apartment on the 8th floor of Quest on Eden, where we stayed for the Steely Dan concert. If you look, you can actually see the Vector Stadium sign where the concert was. Thats how close to it we were . I never took my tripod with me so this pic was taken by steadying my elbows on the balcony rail. Don't ask me the exposure time. I just let the camera take care of that....

I have just started two weeks holiday. You would never guess it by the crap weather we are having at the moment. So much for getting some fishing in. Gale warnings with gusts to 100km/h all over the place. Herself & me decided to Tiki Tour on Monday, so we did. Across to Port Waikato, then down through one way metal roads, through Te Akau down as far as the North side of Raglan Harbour, then up through Waingaro, through the old coal mining area, across the Waikato river at Huntly, then up SH1 as far as Te Kauwhata, then through the back way & home. These are one or two pics we took..

At one point, there was a flock of Peacocks on the side of the road. They were pretty shy & took off through the fence & down the paddock fairly quickly & the sound of the camera shutter made them run even faster. I did, however, manage to get at least one reasonable shot of this fellow. Pretty isn't he ? I have only ever seen one white peacock before & that was at the Auckland Zoo & he was nowhere near as magnificent as this fellow.



A little further on, we came upon a brace of Hares taking the sun in the middle of the road. They took one horrified look at Sherman bearing down on them & headed for the boonies. They didn't go very far though, just hopped about 10 or 15 feet up the bank & froze. I pulled up very gently, fired up the camera & carefully holding it in my lap opened the lens to the maximum zoom & took these two shots. I needn't have bothered being quiet or anything, because even extending my arm out the window & shouting "BANG" at them could induce them to move. These two pics were taken at a distance of about 10 ft. The closest I have ever come to one of these magnificent creatures in the wild. We also saw more pheasants than you could shake a stick at & at one time had a Rosella flying along in front of us.
Talk about waiting for God. We saw this old truck in the middle of nowhere. As you can see, its been there just a little while. I would love to know the story behind it. One would assume that the poor old thing had a major haemorrhage in the middle of the paddock & whoever was driving just got out & walked away, not even bothering to close the door.

This is typical of miles & miles & miles of road along the coast. These stunning pancake like limestone formations. In places that are close to the sea, you can actually see where windblown sand has ripped the softer intermediary layers out.

This is the view from the old boat ramp at the end of the road back across the harbour. Pretty isn't it ?


This is Herself posing between two rather striking rock formations. It was blowing half a gale at the time... Aaah the things she does for love. The view is up the harbour towards the ocean. From there , we headed home & the scenery became a lot more mundane. 320 kilometres later, we very happy to get back to the Flatcattery. We have decided that each time I have holidays, we are going to go at least one place that we haven't been before. This holiday it was supposed to be on the water, but the weather put paid to that, so we did this trip instead. We had fun.